With the playing of Monday night’s game between Arizona State and Texas Tech at Qualcomm Stadium, the Holiday Bowl’s association with the Big 12 Conference ends.

Starting in 2014, the Holiday Bowl enters a six-year contract with the Big Ten Conference – meaning the Holiday Bowl will have the guaranteed top pairing of teams from the Big 10 and Pac-12.

The Rose Bowl is not committed to taking a team from the Pac-12 if the conference champion is in the four-team College Football Playoffs.

“We’re excited about the new arrangement with the Big Ten,” Bruce Binkowski, executive director of the San Diego Bowl Game Association, said earlier this week while discussing the history and future of the Holiday Bowl.

Binkowski was the first employee of the Holiday Bowl after the NCAA added the game to its bowl lineup for the 1978 season.

At the time, the Holiday Bowl, which gave the champion of the Western Athletic Conference a guaranteed place to play, was only the 13th bowl game in the post-season lineup. This season there are 35 bowls with three more on the way for 2014.

The expansion of the bowl lineup has adversely impacted the Holiday Bowl’s rich history.

During its early years, the Holiday Bowl drew national attention for its miracle finishes. Five of the first six games weren’t decided until the final plays.

Then in 1984, the Holiday Bowl produced a national champion when BYU capped a 13-0 season with a 24-17 Michigan team coached by the legendary Bo Schembechler.

Two Heisman Trophy winners played in the Holiday Bowl – Oklahoma State running back Barry Sanders in 1988 and BYU quarterback Ty Detmer two years later.

Sixteen Holiday Bowls have featured matchups of two, top-25 ranked teams and three games featured a top-five team.

But the Holiday Bowl hasn’t featured a pairing of Top-20 teams since 2008 and it has been a decade since a team ranked higher than 10th played in the Holiday Bowl – although seventh-ranked TCU won the 2008 Poinsettia Bowl.

Part of the recent problem has been that the Big 12 is not what it was when the Holiday Bowl first partnered with the conference in 1998. Over the past 16 years, the Holiday Bowl has featured the No. 3 team from the Pac-12 against the No. 5 team from the Big 12.

Back in 1998, the Big 12 had 12 teams. Now it is a 10-team conference.

Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado and Texas A&M have moved to other conferences since the Holiday Bowl hitched its future to the Big 12 in 1998. They have been replaced by TCU and West Virginia. The Big 12 hasn’t sent a Top 10 team to the Holiday Bowl since 2007 after sending three teams ranked seventh or higher in the first five years of the contract.

Meanwhile, the Pac-12 has grown stronger through expansion. Ditto for the Big Ten – which will have 14 teams next year, including recent additions Nebraska, Penn State, Maryland and Rutgers.

Starting in 2014, the Holiday Bowl will get both the No. 3 team from the Pac-12 and Big Ten, although there is a clause in the Big Ten contract that says at least five different teams will play in San Diego over the next six years.

“We’re excited about the new alignment,” said Binkowski. “Because of the Rose Bowl, there is a tradition to the Pac-12 and Big 10 rivalry in Southern California.”

Current members of the Big Ten have played in 13 previous Holiday Bowls with a 8-4-1 record. Pac-12 teams are 7-11 in the Holiday Bowl.